A Node-Locked Software Painkiller

By Adrian Bridgwater, January 29, 2014

SafeNet Sentinel Cloud entitlement management service

SafeNet hasn't quite renamed itself MonetizationNet as a company, but the firm's previous heritage in security seems to take a back step these days to its software monetization and license management products.

The firm's Sentinel Cloud entitlement management service works by eliminating the need for node-locking and so decouples software licenses from physical hardware, which, in theory, reduces monetization risks for vendors provisioning software and enforcing license compliance in virtualized environments.

"While virtualization helps enterprises to reduce costs, it also poses a challenge for software providers who have traditionally relied on the ability to bind licenses to physical machines in order to control access to their software," said the firm's Shlomo Weiss. "Software providers are in need of new tools to track, control, and manage the use of their applications when deployed in virtual environments."

So what's the issue here? SafeNet explains that a "common issue" when deploying software in virtual environments is that it is very possible to maliciously or unintentionally duplicate license rights when spinning up new instances, or to move a license from one instance to another freely.

The proposition then, given the above predicament, is that by utilizing SafeNet's Sentinel Cloud, software providers can rest assured that users cannot virtualize the licensing system and over use beyond what was purchased as the product licenses a user, not a physical machine.

Once licensed under Sentinel Cloud, users can access apps from smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers without needing to generate new licenses for usage on multiple machines. This usage-based license model ensures end users only pay for actual usage of features that are relevant to them, while also providing user insight to the ISV, helping them improve their future offerings.

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